John S. McCain, Will You Please Go Now?

I need a Dramamine to cover GOP Sen. John McCain's re-election bid. With his desperate lurch to the right, he's inducing more motion sickness than a Disney Land teacup. McCain's campaign represents the same self-serving political cynicism that American voters have grown tired of stomaching from the current White House. We need choices, not carbon copies.

After decades of embracing the liberal media moniker "maverick" for his frequent derision of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, McCain has now abandoned the label. He told Newsweek magazine earlier this month: "I never considered myself a maverick." But countless YouTube videos show McCain and vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin invoking the "m" word. Here's a typical bit of self-puffery from a McCain stump speech on Oct.14, 2008:

"It's well known that I have not been elected Miss Congeniality in the United States Senate, nor with the administration. I have opposed the president on spending, on climate change, on torture of prisoner, on … on Guantanamo Bay. On a … on the way that the Iraq War was conducted. I have a long record, and the American people know me very well, and that is independent and a maverick of the Senate, and I'm happy to say that I've got a partner that's a good maverick along with me now."

With veteran tough-on-illegal-immigration GOP challenger J.D. Hayworth (whom I support) just five points behind McCain in the latest Rasmussen poll, Not-Maverick has now abandoned (or rather re-abandoned) his notoriously long-held open borders stance. Just a few short years ago, Not-Maverick was attacking Rush Limbaugh as a "nativist" for opposing the Bush-Kennedy-McCain amnesty plan. When GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions introduced an amendment to bar illegal aliens from receiving the earned income tax credit, McCain likened it to Jim Crow laws.

Sessions: "…I do not believe we should award people who have entered our country illegally, submitted a false Social Security number, worked illegally… I do not believe we should reward them with $29 billion of the taxpayers' money. That is a lot of money."

McCain: "What's next -- are we going to say work-authorized immigrants are going to have to ride in the back of the bus?"